Eco-nomic solutions

Entrepreneurs are at the forefront of some of our most innovative environmental solutions, writes Rebecca Martin.

There's little doubt that Mother Earth's in a bit of trouble. Even the most strident critics of the green movement now admit global warming is causing havoc with our weather systems and drought is becoming the norm in Australia instead of the exception.

While governments, lobby groups and activists around the world try, with differing levels of enthusiasm and success, to find solutions to our planet's woes, not everyone is waiting around for officialdom to come up with the answers.

Some of Australia's most innovative individuals are taking on environmental issues, applying some lateral thinking and turning green solutions into their livelihoods.

Environment trading

Madeleine Lyons takes a creative approach to the environment.

Madeleine Lyons has found a new purpose for the internet. She's using the online world as a potential tool to reduce carbon emissions, one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

The 29-year-old environmental engineer started thinking about renewal energy when she worked in a London-based company that dealt in solar energy.

"I wanted to do something in Australia. I looked at what the market was ready for, and that's how Climate Friendly came up. It's about creating demand for renewable energy in a creative way," says Lyons.

Climate Friendly, which she co-founded by merging her business with a similar start-up run by Joel Fleming, offers individuals and businesses the chance to 'neutralise' the carbon they emit. The site calculates how many carbon emissions a good or service will create and people can buy the monetary equivalent of those emissions.

For example, to neutralise a return flight between Perth and Sydney, you would buy around $16 of credits  less than the approximate $18 you pay in airport tax, while a medium sized house or office using 20 kilowatts of energy a week would need to pay an extra $42 a quarter to neutralise its carbon emissions output.

The amount paid for the emissions funds programs that actively reduce carbon, like wind and solar energy, while Climate Friendly makes a margin on the amount you purchase for its service.

"We're trying to create an alignment between making a profit and making a reasonable difference to the climate," says Lyons "And I can measure that difference in the tonnes of CO2 emissions I've saved. I'm an engineer, I like to measure things."

Although only in business just on a year, the company has picked up clients like Westpac, Colliers International and the Ethical Investment Association

Lyons disputes the idea that the Climate Friendly service just allows people to buy away their carbon emission guilt, rather than making any real changes to the source of the problems, by virtue of where the funding goes.

"We're funding projects like the shower-head exchange program which encourages people in regional NSW to swap to a more energy efficient showerhead," she says. "That's making changes at the source in people's homes."

People moving

Environmental pluses are an added benefit of Nic Lowe's business

When you live in a big city, mobility is one of your biggest problems. If you're not suffering the inevitable unreliability of trains and buses, you're battling road rage in car-choked streets, trying to find the ever-elusive park.

It's also financially draining says Sydney-based Nic Lowe. According to Lowe anyone who drives less than 10,000 kilometres a year is wasting their money.

That's why he started GoGet CarShare, Australia's first car-share business using his burgundy ute named Elvis, and his partner's diesel station wagon.

Customers who become members of the GoGet CarShare pool, which operates in Sydney and Melbourne, can use one of the fleet cars as required. Lowe claims that on a 10,000 kilometres driving-a-year basis, his service is cheaper than buying a car outright because it takes away purchasing, insurance and registration costs. And, you don't have to wash the cars.

"People need to get from A to B in the most efficient way but they don't necessarily need to own a car to do that," he says.

"Instead of everyone owning a car, what we need is an automotive mobility service. If we can change behaviour around cars, then they become just another form of mobility. It's very much an economic rationalist's goal of using an asset most efficiently."

The environmental kickbacks are also clear says Lowe. He estimates that just one of the 16 cars in his fleet replaces up to eight cars on our clogged roads. But Lowe is reluctant to have the business tagged as 'green'.

"I'm not a Green voter, although I believe in some of their principles," he says. "I believe that at the heart of the Green movement is economics because you need to recognise the true cost of what you're doing. The Green movement doesn't always do their economics properly," he says.

"GoShare is much more about providing people with a mobility service and moving them around. The environmental benefits are an added benefit.

"I'm not asking people to join because they're green or they can feel good about the environment," he says. 'I'm asking them to join because we offer a good service."

Sustainable farming

George King's property is a pioneering example of sustainable farming

Coombing Park, which was settled by Thomas Icely, the pioneering owner of the infamous Cobb & Co services, was one of NSW's more illustrious properties in the late 1800s.

But when George King took over the station near Orange in regional NSW from his grandfather nearly a decade ago, every aspect of the property had been run into the ground.

"The property was degraded," King says. "Pastures, fences, water. The cattle were inbred; none of the stock was profitable.

King had to find a quick and cheap way of restoring the property.

"Our equity had been eroded as well," he says. "We needed to get a system in place without spending a huge amount of money."

The system King decided upon was one promoted by an African Allan Savoury in his book Holistic Management.

The basic gist of Savoury's theory is that brittle land needs to be managed as an entire system. One management technique is to move grazing herbivores like cows and sheep around the land more quickly and in much larger packs. The larger mobs trample and pack down the earth and their droppings more firmly, creating a tougher, fertile skin for groundcover to grow on.

King introduced the radical system around eight years ago, changing age-old farming practices and says the effects were immediate.

"We instantly cut a lot of overhead costs," he says. "We're not using a lot of chemicals anymore. We don't need to drench the cattle because the worm-cycle has been broken.

"There's less run-off water and more water infiltrating into the ground, all because there's more mulch on the ground which the cattle trampled in through high density grazing," he explains.

"Creek banks are healing and trees are regenerating. The stock are in better health, we've got lower overhead costs and we're more profitable," King adds.

With bio-diversity and profitability up, Coombing Park is now considered a pioneering example of sustainable farming and King says many of the techniques are so grounded in common sense he can't believe he didn't think of them earlier.

"We're addressing the root causes of the problems, not the symptoms," he says. "You can't have an economically viable farm without it being environmentally sound because you work with your farm," he says. "That's where you retain your wealth."